


A Boy with a Badge

by Goonlalagoon



Series: A Boy with a Badge [1]
Category: Leagues and Legends - E. Jade Lomax
Genre: Actually just Jones Family Feelings if we're being honest, F/M, I had such Jones siblings emotions while writing this, Jack dies AU, Liam goes to the Academy AU, Liam lives AU, choosing what to include and what to cut out was a mission so yeah, didn't include everything because a lot of that would have been straight up plagiarism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-22 01:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13156254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goonlalagoon/pseuds/Goonlalagoon
Summary: In the last year of his life, Jack Farris had shot up tall. Bea had rolled her eyes when he asked for the sewing kit so he could (inexpertly) lengthen the hems of his trousers yet again and declared his mother must have kicked him out from home because she knew this endless need for new clothes was coming. Jack grinned at her and had crooked hems until the next growth spurt hit (then slightly less crooked ones, because he had more practice, now). He’d hit his head on branches he had once scurried beneath and found the stash of snow cookies on the shelf that had previously been safely out of sight. He had complained when he noticed them, loud and laughing, that he wasn’t a kid you had to hide treats from. Liam had laughed back and told him 'yeah you are, Farris', only mostly joking.He’d been growing tall, by the end - by the end there had been so much of him to fall, to hit the ground in accelerated slow motion. Falling was the bravest thing Liam had ever known, and Jack had always been so very brave.- A Leagues and Legends series AU: Jack dies, and Liam goes to the Academy.





	A Boy with a Badge

**Author's Note:**

> It's been exactly a year since Remember the Dust was published, and I decided to use that as a deadline to finish this up because I’ve been dropping in and out of it for ages. It's been really fun to work on, and a massive learning experience in terms of trying to pick out what plot points are 'key' to the storyline and which need to be disregarded for the sake of brevity.
> 
> Title shamelessly referencing ink-splotch’s own ‘Boy with a Scar’, because three guesses where I the idea for this from.

In the last year of his life, Jack Farris had shot up tall. Bea had rolled her eyes when he asked for the sewing kit so he could (inexpertly) lengthen the hems of his trousers yet again and declared his mother must have kicked him out from home because she knew this endless need for new clothes was coming. Jack grinned at her and had crooked hems until the next growth spurt hit (then slightly less crooked ones, because he had more practice, now). He’d hit his head on branches he had once scurried beneath and found the stash of snow cookies on the shelf that had previously been safely out of sight. He had complained when he noticed them, loud and laughing, that he wasn’t a kid you had to hide treats from. Liam had laughed back and told him _yeah you are, Farris_ , only mostly joking.

He’d been growing tall, by the end - by the end there had been so much of him to fall, to hit the ground in accelerated slow motion. Falling was the bravest thing Liam had ever known, and Jack had always been so very brave.

They held each other up at the funeral, Bea’s hand in his, in George’s, his arms around them both, Bidi clinging to their legs. Bea wept, hard, and George stood like mountain stone. Liam watched them lower the body into the ground as dark clouds shifted overhead, and murmured _we fill the sky with our mourning._

Later George asked, voice rough, what he had meant. He told them, voice cracking, heart breaking - and how was that possible? His heart was already broken so why was it splintering all over again? - about white wings and dark skies. His heart was breaking, and he wanted to go _home,_ but this was his home, wasn’t it?

After a month, Bea packed a bag and told him to go. Her hands were steady and her eyes were soft, a mountain woman who’d never seen desert sands except in his stories. It had been a month of drifting, George curling in on herself and Bidi throwing confused toddler tantrums at Jack’s absence. It had been a month of staring at his hands and wondering what he could have done differently. It had been a month of wanting his mother’s comforting composure and wondering how tall his baby sister had grown.

He argued, hands waving and voice low. He had a family here, he wasn’t _abandoning_ them, he wasn’t leaving George to do this on her own. George shook her head and thunked her own bag down on the table, trading a look with Bea that said _I told you so._  
“Someone has to go tell the Farrises their son isn’t coming home.”

He couldn’t let her do it alone. The resistance would run on, Challenge and the Merry Men, the Baker’s masterminded network, but the Piper and the Dragon Slayer travelled south with the Rangers until they reached a crossroads. Every step was heavy, weighed down. Liam wondered if George felt like they were carrying the Giantkiller on their shoulders as well.

The Farris Rambly house was almost as familiar to Liam as the little bakery, winters’ worths of stories and sprawling descriptions. It was a noisy, chaotic place, but something in their faces made silence spread out from their arrival. Liam was a storyteller, a singer, but the words caught in his throat, so it was George’s stiff voice that hit air first.

George wasn’t good at this - she _knew_ she wasn’t good at this, at soft words and gentle reveals, at sympathy and kindness. But then these words would be like throwing stones into a pool whatever she said - the ripples to the back of the room as faces fell, crumpled, and wept.

“We met Jack in the mountains - he was one of our best friends. He died saving people.” She swallowed, squeezed Liam’s hand. “He was always saying he’d come home to visit, soon. I’m sorry.”

The Farrises insisted they stay. In the mountains you mourned by burying your loved ones deep into the ground. In the desert you filled the sky with smoke, a beacon and a symbol. In the Forest you planted their favourite tree, and told stories over it - here is who they were, here is how they grew. Liam’s tongue came loose and he filled the night with tales of a boy who wanted to save everyone he met.

When they left, George offered to go to the desert with him, but he shook his head. Someone had to go back to Bea and Bidi, and this close to his family’s world he didn’t have the strength to turn back. George shooed him along with a smile.  
“Get going. I’ve travelled on my own plenty of times.” There was a Jack shaped shadow to her voice, so he didn’t say _but you shouldn’t have had to, not ever, and you weren’t supposed to need to ever again_ , just turned towards the desert and started walking.

He found his first family by an old, faintly familiar oasis. He wandered into camp with a grin he didn’t quite feel comfortable with and his mother shot to her feet, delight breaking through her smooth mask. He hugged aunts and slapped his uncles’ backs, kissed cheeks and cooed over new arrivals, then looked around.

“Hey, where’s Laney?“ There was a bubble of solemn quiet and for an agonising heartbeat he thought he’d lost her too, but his mother just shook her head, disapproval plain on her face if you knew her well enough to see it.  
“She went off to that Academy. Turned out she was a Mage after all. You only missed her by a week.” Liam had tried to teach his sister to hold fire in her cupped hands and knew it was a fool’s errand, but he held his tongue. He stayed long weeks with them, telling stories and learning how to be a desert child again. He’d been there almost a month before he told his mother that he’d lost a friend on his travels, how he’d fallen just out of Liam’s desperate reach. He cried as she rubbed his back and ran gentle hands over his hair the way she had when he was a kid, and wished this was something she could fix for him.

It was a long, lonely trek back to the mountains. His heart lifted at the thought of seeing his wife and child, Georgie, his other friends, but as the mountains threw shadows over him all he felt was cold. He was tired, tired of planning and fighting and holding people up at children’s funerals.

By the time he walked back over the threshold, he’d been turning the idea over and over with every step. He talked with Bea and George until the early hours, and the next time the Rangers were in town he was waiting with a pen and an application form.

There were two L. Joneses in that year’s intake. Rupert was far too polite to ask why they had turned up weeks apart, or why Miss L. Jones, mage, hadn’t mentioned that her brother would be joining the guide programme. Then again, Liam was a last minute addition to the course, his application arriving technically late but with strong endorsement from several quarters - the Rangers’ guide had apparently met him on the road, and thought the lad had talent and motivation, even if he was a few years older than the usual intake (Bea had had some paperwork forged to make the age gap a little less extreme). To Rupert, he had the slightly wide eyed look of the desperate, but it wasn’t his business to pry. He rattled through the introduction and pointed out the correct door - L. Jones, guide, and B. Keen, mage - and jerked his head down the hallway.

“Laney is in with Gloria, up that staircase and third on the right, if you want to tell her you’ve arrived.” It wasn’t his place to pry, but even so he noted the way Liam’s eyes flickered and thought _ah, so she doesn’t know you’re here._ Rupert disappeared into his own room, and a waiting stack of his uncle’s paperwork. He only had two hours before he was due to slip out to meet Sez, who had directions to a new little problem in the lower city. Rupert liked solving problems.

Liam shifted on his feet. In the haze of applications and leaving, he hadn’t figured out how to tell Laney that he was going to be turning up like a lost puppy. He turned on his heel and started towards the staircase, bag still slung over his shoulder. He paused to trace a finger over his sister’s course, wondering how she’d thrown the sand in everyone’s eyes for this, and knocked gently. A pink cheeked blonde girl opened it almost immediately, and he almost rapped her on the nose because he wasn’t done knocking.

“Oh! Um…hi?”  
“Hi,” he smiled politely, then his eyes met his sister’s over her shoulder. Laney dropped the glass she was holding and the blonde girl - presumably Gloria - jumped as it shattered, but Liam just winced. “Hi, Lane. Long time no see.” Gloria looked between them, then snapped her fingers at Laney.

“Hey, Jones, do I need to play bodyguard here or can I go to the library?” Laney made a vague flapping motion and Liam stood aside to let Gloria past, before stepping carefully around the broken glass to wrap his arms around his baby sister and cry into her shoulder, because less than half a year ago he’d buried a brother that she would never get to know.

He wrote to Bea, Bidi, and George, every week - fat packets of letters smuggled out to a hidden family. He told Laney about them that first afternoon, curled on the edge of her bunk, words spilling out of him like water. He tried to tell her about Jack, but all he could manage was to say he’d lost a friend, the same truth with gaping holes as the tale he’d told their mother. When he was done wiping his eyes, she opened a rift, and he fell hard enough to bruise, the world screaming around him.

“ _Damn,_ Laney, I knew you were determined, but this…” She smiled, sharp, eyes still worried. She hadn’t tried opening a rift around a mage before, and was suddenly foreseeing a lot of problems if she wasn’t very careful. Then again, she was good at careful and precise. Liam grinned back, shakily, and whistled sparks out of the air for her to flick smugly between her fingers.

He didn’t tell her everything. There were secrets that weren’t his to share, and lives that only lasted while Bea’s network was uninterrupted, and things that he just wanted to hide from for a while, but he told her the barest bones of his life since he left the desert for the first time. When he described the Graves’ machines, her fists clenched hard enough to turn her knuckles pale, fury and grief. Liam watched her face twist, horror and dismay, and tried to remember not having known. It felt like he’d always known mages were being stolen, drained. It felt like he’d always been trying to spirit them away to safety, but it hadn’t even been a quarter of his life.

They fought for the first time in years bare weeks later, chins lifted, eyes flashing, acid spilling from their lips. After, Liam curled up in the branches of a tree, bitterness rolling in his gut. He missed Bea, his darling daughter, Georgie, so much it hurt - he was missing them because he had missed Laney, quietly, for years now, but she wasn’t Laney any more. He spoke and it was like she wasn’t hearing him, and he buried his face in his arms and wondered if she’d forgotten how to understand him, or if he had stopped knowing how to talk to her.

Laney stalked to the library and studied like her life depended on it, everything in her shrieking _perfection, no flaws, no weakness, I’m not a child missing targets in the dark anymore, Liam, I don’t need you to treat me like a kid_ \- she had been chasing Liam ever since she could remember, stumbling in his footprints, drifting in his wake, and now he seemed further away than ever.

Rupert noticed, because Rupert watched everything, but it was Gloria who dropped down opposite Liam the next day as he was pushing his breakfast around his plate and fixed him with a startlingly pointed look.

“You know, people grow up even if you’re not there.” He flinched, and she frowned. “I mean, you seem surprised every time she mentions anything that you don’t remember. She says you left the desert years ago - did you think she wouldn’t have changed? Do you really think you haven’t changed, either?” She got up again before he could respond, and he huffed out a tired laugh.  
“What, not gonna wait for me to thank you for your wise advice?” She flicked her braid back over her shoulder and shrugged.  
“Nah, I’m a sage. It’s my job to tell people things. Whether it gets through their skulls or not is frankly not my concern, at this point.”

Laney knocked on his door that evening and snuck him out to the shooting range, smile sharp, guns polished, aim perfect. He leaned on the fence and tried to see the child he’d left behind in her steady stance and precise movements. He took a shaky breath, and tried to see the woman she’d grown into instead.

Liam wrote home weekly, to his wife and daughter, his second sister, his varied friends in the mountains. They wrote back just as often, Bidi’s latest crayon pictures carefully packaged in pieces of card to keep them flat. Bea wrote to Laney, too, well before Laney had really adjusted to the idea that her footloose brother was _married_ , let alone that she was an _aunt_. It took almost a month for Laney to figure out how to reply, but eventually Sez was ferrying letters between several different Jones’ (even if she didn’t know who they ended up with - letters passed from Rivertown to contacts, north through quiet hands, to a small, sleepy village, and back through the same route)

He wrote to his mother less often, when he remembered. It was only recently that he had realised the people he left behind might wonder where he went, might want to hear his stories before he made it home, that people at both ends of these letters would be growing and changing. Laney wrote too, hesitant and hiding it behind smooth penmanship and precise phrasing, because though Aisling had given her daughter her blessing to leave it had been reluctant. Their mother’s letters came back less frequently, but through more official channels.

Sanders Grey didn’t enter into either of their orbits until they were given their group assignments for their second year project. Rupert they both knew of, stiff and straitlaced and slightly pompous, and Clem they both tended to avoid. Laney found him condescending, and frankly Liam just found him annoying - Liam found most Heroes and Combat specs annoying, really, because he kept comparing them to people like Robin, Rosie Red, and Jack. He generally managed to avoid them fairly easily. People tended to like Liam, and one advantage of being several years older was that no-one really wanted to mess with him beyond the odd taunt, even if he _was_ just a Guide.

Rupert organised for them all to meet in a cheerful little cafe down in the part of Rivertown they wouldn’t have thought a blue-blooded hero like him would know about. Liam stole chips from Laney’s plate and eyed their companions a touch warily. Grey eyed him back over the top of his book, then turned a page and ignored everything else in favour of a history of ship manufacture in St John’s Port. Liam fought the temptation to push more food onto the kid’s plate while Rupert set a pitcher of lemonade carefully down on the table. Clem was well used to his roommate’s eccentricity and tapped the book gently with the hand he hadn’t been using to pick at his fish with.

“Hey, pipsqueak, time to work. C’mon, you can write a _reading list_ for us and everything.” Grey sniffed and checked his book for any greasy marks, giving Clem a glare that the other boy cheerfully ignored. Liam flicked his eyebrows up, a touch intrigued. Rupert blinked, once, before his face returned to it’s default polite smile, and Liam felt oddly pleased that he hadn’t been the only one taken aback.

He told his family all of this, in the letter he sent home the next morning, and George scrawled her own add on to Bea’s long missive back -  
_I still think you need to pay more attention to the Hammersfeld kid. He seems a little too good at fading into the furniture and doing paperwork, for someone who’s a wannabe Hero._

By the time Liam read it, Rupert had already startled both Liam and Laney by revealing that he took routine jaunts off into the city to do some freelance vigilante work, so all Liam could do was write back to say she’d been right, in delighted detail.

But that was after the fish shop had been attacked, and Liam had obediently slunk over to the far wall, the Elsewhere pressing round him, something cold curdling in his gut. Clem had been a combat spec, brave and foolish, and Liam had frantically recalled first aid lessons as he pretended he was harmless, pressing shaking hands onto Clem’s bleeding leg. Grey had gone still and cold when Clem went down, eyes wide and face smooth, and the part of Liam that wasn’t panicking because there were gunshots and blood and he _wasn’t supposed to have to deal with this yet_ , was thinking _who taught you you weren’t allowed to be afraid, kiddo? Who told you that you always have to hide?_

Under cover of the chatter, Liam heard himself making plans the way he had held hissed conferences with George and Jack, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t with people who knew the price of keeping civilians safe. He heard Jack’s cadences slipping into his words as he planned, some, but more so as he sniped at their guards as he tied bandages with trembling hands.

Once Laney and Rupert had taken the thieves down, and Liam had taken advantage of the gold spilling from his sister’s wrists to slip a little of his own into the bricklayer who’d taken a shot to the gut, Grey had given Clem a long, slightly squeaky lecture all the way back to the Academy, hands waving and his chin shaking. Nurse eventually almost pushed him out of the infirmary so she could re-bandage the wound in peace, and he sulked back to his empty room to bury himself in a book and try to ignore the silence.

In his own room, Liam stared at the ceiling for a long while until someone rapped on the door, planning how to write this out for Bea and George.  
“It’s open, Lane.” There was a pause, and Rupert pushed it open instead, peering in to check he wasn’t about to trample on anyone’s prized possessions, looking vaguely apologetic that he wasn’t Laney and unsure whether he was equally welcome. Liam sat up, confused, and Rupert held up a bottle of disinfectant hand wash and clean cloths.

“I didn’t know if you had any, and…” he nodded at Liam’s hands, which he belatedly realised were still splattered reddish-brown. His fingers were trembling when he reached for the cloth and it fell to the floor. Rupert didn’t comment, just picked it up and helped Liam clean the blood from his hands.

Liam had stayed with Grey, Clem, and the bricklayer, on the blood splattered floor at Sally-Anne’s, but Laney had gone with Rupert to meet his friend who knew a few people. At breakfast the next morning she set her tray down next to Rupert’s with a sharp smile. Liam arrived after her, the letter he had written in place of sleep the night before posted and on its way north through careful, nameless hands, and ambled over to join them. Laney was all smiles and pointed words, and Liam blinked at them both. He didn’t pay much attention to the arrival of a Bureau inspector, because he was turning things over in the back of his head. He’d come to the Academy to find Laney, and perhaps to find something to keep him from leading people to their deaths. But he read George’s letters - Challenge, raids, shoring up villages for the winter - and felt he was killing time.

He leaned forwards and told Rupert he wanted in, too, smile wide and wild. Laney flicked him a warning glance, and he shrugged back. Liam had learnt to shoot at rabbits, sure - but he had never lifted a weapon in a fight. He’d never needed to, the Elsewhere practically begging for him to call on it.

(Even Rupert hadn’t been certain about that particular secret, just had his quiet suspicions and recollections of his mother’s descriptions of the ins and outs of desert social standings and status markers, so when the first flare of gold came from an unexpected Jones he twitched once in surprise, then set it aside to worry about later.)

Thorne called them all in, one by one, to peer over them and decide if they were worth collecting. Rupert was too bland, a cookie-cutter blue-blood hero, and Grey wrinkled his nose and talked at length about the way plants grew to different heights at different altitudes until he no longer felt watched. Laney smiled and nodded and kept her cards close to her chest, and Liam fought down the urge to shift guiltily in his seat.

The inspector peered over his golden spectacles and told him about the good things he’d heard, the reports of Liam snapping out a well-timed foot to knock a gunman’s aim awry and buy his sister time to fling gold at the hole in the wall. He dropped a casual mention about how the bricklayer had survived by the skin of his teeth into the conversation and watched the elder Jones’ face, and raised his brows when Liam shook his head when Thorne spoke about how he had so much untapped _potential._  
“I just wanted to learn how to save people,” Liam muttered, relief tinging his voice soft.

On the long, lonely walk from the desert back to the mountains, the first time he left and came back, Liam had thought about the Leagues. By then he was old friends with the Rangers, inside jokes and careful omissions in their official reports. By then, they’d all sat around the bakery table while they poured over maps, and Sarge had chuckled and called them an unofficial league as he added Bureau intelligence to their notes.

When Jack and George slipped into the Graves’ basement in search of locked cells, years before, Liam had watched them with appraising eyes. George he’d pegged straight off as the strategist, a reluctant hero who just wanted peace, and Jack for the wild card tactician, who leapt without looking and always landed on his feet. They had made a good team, an unofficial hero and her right-hand combat spec.

Liam had gold spilling from his lips whenever he wanted (Elsewhere storms allowing) even if there was no purple on his sleeves, so he had supposed that made Bea their sage - knowledge, research, a network of whispers and plans.

So who had been their guide? Who was supposed to have made sure they all got out alive?

Clem was laid out for long enough that they had to cover his part of the assignment between the rest of them. Grey produced reams of notes and Liam drew on years of working with George and the Rangers to make commentary on the strategies used and ways they could have been improved on. Liam found he actually quite liked Grey, in a protective older brother sort of way. He supposed he was probably predisposed to want to look out for any mountain born child who’d managed to leave, even if they weren’t someone he remembered helping to smuggle away.

When Sez dropped a curse diagram in front of them, Laney and Liam scowled over it for the better part of an hour until Gloria peered over their shoulders and suggested they take it to Grey.  
“I mean, I’m good - Lane, you’re very good - but that scrawny kiddo knows something about _everything_. And we’ve been having some debates over Elsewhere theory lately and seriously? I think he knows more about it than the professor.” They collared Grey in the library, and he shuffled nervously, fingers trembling as he smoothed out the crayon-scrawled paper. It was the first of their little ventures he joined the three of them on, muttering about how they’d all get themselves killed and he’d have to do the whole project himself if he didn’t.

It was Liam who spotted him sneaking off the next day and followed, patient, to be trailed around the tenement housing surrounding what should have been a cut and dry old warehouse with a slight occupation of Things. He had a cold inkling what the kid was looking for, after the first house, because he’d been turning it over in the back of his mind too.

“You need to be more careful.” Grey hissed, while Liam met the mountain woman’s eye and saw the recognition dawn on her face. He didn’t stand out in Rivertown, dark skin and gold flicking from his fingertips only when he had no-one to hide from, but in the mountains the Piper had been anything but inconspicuous. He met her gaze over Grey’s head and silently pleaded with her not to let on.

She trembled, nervous, and shooed them away with a muttered thanks for the warning, fear a thick overtone to her voice that Liam guessed would never leave. It was only once they were back at the Academy that he realised he didn’t know her name. He had known the girl’s, briefly, but he had forgotten it - he had remembered the loss more than the victory, after they had returned her and sent the family on their way.

He lay awake for hours, that night, chills rolling down his spine. He was safe and warm, curled in a bedroll in a room far from the Graves family and their machines, but whenever he closed his eyes he was knelt on hard mountain ground, Jack sprawled out before him, the child numb with shock in his loose arms. In his mind, his hands were red as he fumbled for a pulse that wasn’t there, and George was telling him they had to leave. He slept badly, and woke cold.

Liam wasn’t one of the founders of the stable loft crew. In the mountains, he had learnt empathy, to keep an eye on his rescues and allies, to watch for hidden injuries and the kind of strain that was getting to be too much, but in Rivertown he closed his eyes again without realising. Bullies left him alone, and anyone with him, so it was a while before he realised that wasn’t the case for everyone.

Once he did, he guiltily stuck as close to Weeds as he could, and then Leaf when the first year arrived and started getting black eyes every week. George had tripped Liam several times a day until he learnt to roll not fall, and Jack had shown him a few tricks to doge a punch, but nothing Liam knew well enough to teach. He might have tried anyway, if Leaf hadn’t stopped showing up quite so bruised while still being hauled up for fighting on a regular basis.

Francis Uyeda had been watching, careful and considering, and had offered to teach Leaf a few tricks. Leaf mentioned it to Liam, when he asked, and Liam became Red’s second student. It turned out Liam knew more than he’d realised, and after some polishing Red started getting him to help instruct. Laney swallowed her pride and allowed herself to be a beginner at hand to hand defence, but dragged them all out to the shooting range to put them all to shame.

Several heroes and combat specs objected, but once his leg was mostly healed Clem showed up one evening with a complaining Grey.  
“This pipsqueak needs to learn to take a fall, and at least how to punch someone without breaking a thumb.” He glanced at Red and shrugged. “Uyeda, need another pair of hands to demo that staff drill over there?” When Clem dropped his tray down next to them at breakfast the next morning, Liam just shifted his own tray over while Laney gave a cordial nod. Gloria eyed Clem with suspicion, which rapidly turned into delighted interest when he started asking Grey something complicated about maths that no-one else understood.

They laughed, and learned, made in-jokes and sat together at meals, and Liam sat on the top of a ladder with his fingers twitching while his sister and their friends fought off the most irritated, offended combat specs and heroes. He wanted to leap down into the fray, but Red was taking advantage of the noise to murmur quiet, trusting explanations. Liam grinned at him, sharp, and forced himself to stay quiet. He promised himself that one day he would find a way to introduce the kid to the Merry Men; he thought that the boy from the Dread’s flotilla may have some common ground with that band of cheerful, dedicated protectors.

Red stayed out of the fight, but Liam dropped in to startle a hero who was getting a bit too close to a frankly terrified Grey. He took a hit to the eye (up in the loft, Red was murmuring _duck, Jones - no, not you Laney - c’mon, you’ve got to remember to dodge and put a block up, otherwise it won’t matter how good we get your punches_ ) but snapped out a low sweep that sent the hero to the ground. Grey slipped silently behind a pile of hay, trembling, fingers twitching, and stayed there when the others were rounded up. Liam very carefully did not glance in his hidden direction as they were rounded up for a scolding.

Heads was furious, disappointed, and confused. Thorne was quietly delighted and outwardly scolding, and called the Jones siblings aside for a quiet word after their friends were dismissed. Liam nodded along and listened, and let Laney do the talking, because Thorne was the kind of man Liam hated.

Laney disliked Thorne too, for many of the same reasons, but she could also use him, and she knew how to play this game with polished ease while Liam had never had to try. They wandered back to their rooms, both thinking. Liam had no intention of joining the Bureau; he was going to graduate and go home. Laney eyed him, and raised an eyebrow.

“After two years of this, you’re going to just _disappear?_ I think think after two years of training you, they’re going to expect you to work for _someone_ in the system.” His breath caught, and Laney shrugged, puzzled. “Maybe you’ll sign on with the Rangers. If you’re really determined that this was just some two-year learning experience, declare dramatically that you’ve decided it isn’t for you after a few months of real work. Fake an accident that knocks some sense into you - don’t you _dare_ pretend to have died, though, I’m not going to dab my eyes at your memorial and use the past tense and pretend to mourn you.” Liam opened his mouth to reply, when Leaf barrelled around the corner bruised and grinning, to drag them both into Rivertown to celebrate.

(Grey slunk along with them, barely touched by the scuffle, overlooked and left out of the scolding, and wondered why he didn’t feel victorious. He felt guilty, and he hated it, because he’d just avoided getting hurt or into trouble, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to anyone if either of those had not been true. He read books defensively on the back of his eyes for the entire evening, grumpy and withdrawn, fingers twisting absently)

High on the fading adrenaline and lost the way he kept looking for old familiar faces in the stable loft crew, it took a moment for Liam to realise the trembling in his hands as he leaned on the wall, catching his breath after singing along with Leaf and his table of new friends, was something more - something worse - than just standard post fight-jitters. He swayed, stumbled, and fell.

They hauled him to Sez’s mother, her grumbling and her hissed admonishments over the lives he’d ended - he wanted to spit back _and what about the humans? You’re listing all the stains you can see and accusing me of having chosen only the ones who weren’t like me to kill, but you can’t see even half of the lives I’ve ended. You can’t see any of the lives that I have saved._ Sez squared her shoulders and said he only killed the monsters she sent him after, and Liam didn’t say that he’d been killing things that slunk through the night since long before then.

Rue grumbled and muttered and healed him anyway because her daughter asked, and Liam felt bile catching in his throat. He didn’t know of any hags with healing up their sleeves in the mountains, and there was a chill on the back of his neck. He knew of only one person who had both the reason and the funds to send a bespoke curse like this to kill him, and he couldn’t believe it would only have been sent for him.  
_Georgie, be okay, please - be okay, be safe, please. I can’t lose you, too._

Bea wrote to him a tense week later, exhaustion heavy in the scrape of ink on paper. She didn’t tell him much - just that George had been ill, that they had visited some old friends and that she was recovering now. Liam smoothed trembling fingers over the paper, seeing George crumple and fall in his imagination. The Rangers came to the Academy, and Liam slipped in to see them without telling Laney.

He had told his sister a lot of things. He had told her about the Graves’ dungeons, cold and dark, about being broken out, and about how he had fallen in love with a baker. He told her stories about his daughter, about how he had lost a friend and realised he needed to rediscover his sister. He hadn’t told her about the Dragon Slayer, because he had wanted to talk about George instead, and Jack had been too sore a wound to speak of in more than passing. He hadn’t told her about the Piper, because he’d been trying to pretend he was someone else for a while, that he was just a desert boy who’d wandered far from home.

He hadn’t told her about the Rangers, because he trusted his sister, he did, but it would take only one slip of the tongue to raise suspicion, and his friends had been leaving him out of their paperwork and letting him skip out of their loose fingers for years. He slipped into their rooms after dark, hugged May and shook Sarge’s hand, and asked to go back North with them.

“I have to get home, Sarge. Georgie - she could have died, with the thing we both had, and I wouldn’t have been there. I need to go, see my wife, my daughter. I’m - I’ve gotten what I needed to, here.” Sarge frowned, and told him to wait.  
“You’re a few months off of your badge, Liam, from graduating and going official.” Liam scowled.  
“That wasn’t why I came here, Sarge. I came here to find my sister, and I came here to learn something. I don’t need a badge and some paperwork to still have all of that. I need to get _home._ ”

He thought about knocking on Laney’s door, but didn’t. Instead he hesitated outside for fifteen minutes, shuffling his feet, having long arguments with her in his head, then went to his own room and wrote a careful letter while his roommate snored peacefully in the upper bunk. He wrote a letter and left it on his desk - he was sorry for leaving so soon, he wouldn’t be back, he’d love it if she came to visit sometime once she had graduated, and he would write as often as he could.

When she caught up with him in the quiet Rivertown streets, he thought for a moment she had already been to his room and found the letter waiting on his desk, had raced after him to snap and scold, chin lifted and not hiding from her disagreements because she was too proud to sneak off to the dunes to shout.

He squared himself for an argument, a fight, and it was so much worse because instead of furious she was _hurt_ \- at least, she was hurt _first_ , and the fury boiled up and built on that foundation. If she had chased after him, he would have known she was hurt but he wouldn’t have seen that moment of shocked grief, dawning understanding, the way she flinched when she saw his pack and knew that he was leaving.

“I have to - I have to go back, Lane, I couldn’t live with myself if I was here and - I came here to see you again and I’ve seen you every day for almost two years, now, so I -”  
“So you’re _done?_ I’ve had my share of your time - we’ve had our share of your time - and now you’re going to just dance off into the night for the next -”

The explosion was almost a relief, a welcome distraction and delay. They ran for the burning building, and it was as natural as breathing, now, the way they fell into step and grinned sharply at each other. The way she went wry and witty to hide her fear when he woke, bleary, in a locked cellar was familiar too - Jack had gone flippant when he was scared, and Liam felt oddly nostalgic with all the parts of him that weren’t furious that someone had made _his_ baby sister afraid.

Laney bit her lip, then squared her shoulders and pushed him back towards their guard.  
“I need you to block me from his line of sight…and I think I need you to be further away than this.” Liam shifted, letting himself stumble glancing over his shoulder to check they weren’t being observed.  
“Lane, what are you -” She split the air behind her open, and it dragged at him, pulling him forwards. Laney slipped through into the rift, sealing it behind her before he could be pulled through after her.

He stared at the space she had been standing, and it was a relief when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder and slammed him into the wall. He silently thanked Red for every word of tacit advice, and swept the other man’s feet from underneath him. The wards on the cellar itched at him, but they didn’t cut him off from the Elsewhere - just kept him from sending anything outside of it. Fire bloomed on his fingers, and he grinned as fiercely as Jack ever had.

Liam had never _liked_ fighting, but now he thought he understood why people did. This was so much simpler, the way his ribs screamed under heavy kicks and his knuckles split and bled, then stung as Elsewhere gold trickled over his hands, than thinking about whether his baby sister was burning up on the other side of the universe’s skin, than the endless worry about his family in the distant mountains. This was so much cleaner than the heavy ache around his heart made up of every moment he had spent with Jack in his life, and every hollow moment since.

The door clicked open and reinforcements arrived. The world outside was aflame, and Liam remembered throwing Elsewhere fire at stone walls to break through them, feet slipping on rain-slick cobbles. They woke the Academy and Liam slipped into his old skin, or maybe had never left - he’d never been the planner, but he remembered marshaling forces at George’s side, discussing tactics with Rosie Red, Marian Hood, and Sarge. Heads thought that these were children not ready to face the trials of heroism, but Liam had been fighting monsters with vigilantes younger than these for years. They started back for Rivertown, and Clem dropped into place next to Grey. He met Liam’s glance with a scowl, and Liam shrugged at Rupert, who shrugged back. Grey muttered something about not needing babysitting, which they all cheerfully ignored. 

Watching his little sister duck behind the firestorm that was their foe without him was one of the hardest things Liam had ever done, but he knew he would be nothing but a liability that close to a rift. The demon turned its eyes on Grey, first, and Liam was almost offended; he wasn’t used to not being the strongest mage in the room. Rupert went down, thrown through a wall, and Clem motioned at Liam to back up, shifting, forcing it to split its attention. The combat spec took a hit that threw him across the room to crumple to the floor as well, dazed, clutching at his arm. Even from a distance Liam could see the shattered bone poking out.

Liam couldn’t breathe, hands shaking, heart racing, but he clung to the sword that felt clunky in his hands, and he skipped backwards into a new room as it approached. It loomed over him, roaring, and he laughed, harsh and broken.  
“You think I’m afraid of _you?_ I’ve weathered the fiercest sandstorms of the desert, been dragged into the Seeress’ dungeons and danced my way out, whistling as I went.” He ducked behind a table and rolled away as it exploded into splinters. “I’ve spoken with dragons, and I’ve got friends who are _far_ more dangerous than you and your kin.” He braced his feet, charred sword held low, and whistled up a handful of sparks to distract, watching the gaping mouth come closer - “I’m the Pied Piper, and _you don’t scare me._ ”

It should have been over, he thought as the possessed thief slunk in, shaking off bullets without noticing them, burning up from within. He’d killed the fire demon and Laney had sealed the rift and this wasn’t _fair,_ this wasn’t - this wasn’t right, but then this was what he’d been telling Grey just moment’s before, wasn’t it? This wasn’t a child’s storybook, and good people died when they followed him into a fight because the world didn’t care about who was right or who was wrong. Liam had seen an avalanche, once, in the mountains, the great rumbling roar that shook in your bones, and now he felt it again as their pipsqueak sage split the world apart without trying.

Grey disappeared into the reopened rift like he was melting into thin air, fingers scrabbling at the edge before fading in swirls of gold. Liam could feel it pulling at him too, hungry, hollow - or maybe that was his heart in his chest, watching another friend fall, wondering if he would be able to get back up again, this time, remembering how young Jack had been when they met, how young he had been when he died. Liam was stuck to the wall like a fly in a spider web, and Laney couldn’t find Grey, couldn’t save him, but the world was filling with fire demons - Rupert took a shuddering breath and told her to close it. Laney lifted her shaking hands, and Clem plunged headlong into the rift as it sealed.

Clem had no cloak of golden luck, nothing to offer up in bargain, but he’d signed up to be a combat spec for a reason - here was something he couldn’t fight but he wasn’t going to let that stop him hauling Grey back home. He fell into golden fire, reaching for waving hands and an ink-stained nose, and he didn’t care what it cost him.

Liam was still reeling from the rift’s first pull when the world shook around them and Clem burst through, Grey clutched close. Halfway through untangling the bonds holding Liam to the wall Laney lunged for them, sealing the rift back up as it pulled in the last wisps of magic flitting around the room. Liam sagged down to the floor as the Elsewhere tugged at him, and wept because they were all going to make it home.

Thorne was waiting for them at the Academy, and Liam readied himself to fight and flee. Laney was smart; she could bat her eyes and pretend she hadn’t known a thing about what her brother had been up to when the news reached her, twist Thorne around her finger with ease, and Sez wasn’t the kind of person Thorne would be able to shakedown for information on where he may have gone, if he even thought of it.

Sarge was scowling, indignant, and Heads just had his forehead creased in puzzlement as he figured out what was going on, so he thought he could at least make it bloodless. A strong sticking spell and he could be away, out of the city in the chaos before anyone could get the bureaucrat free. And once he was in the mountains they could try all they liked; the Piper would lead them a merry dance. He braced himself, and Thorne smirked slyly as he poured all of Liam’s supposed secrets out into the shaking night air.

Heads stepped forwards, cleared his throat, and lied as easily as Laney did every day. Rupert scurried away to fabricate paperwork to say that L. Jones had been gainfully employed at the Academy for years before starting on the Guide course. Liam tried not to look too startled, or too gleeful.

Knocking on Laney’s door to see if she wanted to send a letter to the mountains along with his, Liam knew before he picked the lock. He had heard these sounds before; a quiet room, muffled movement. He knew the feeling twisting through his gut, and he knew the ice slipping down his spine - _how could you have been so foolish_. People were whispering about the Lady of the Lake reborn across the city, and you had to be a lot more subtle than whispers to avoid the notice of the Seeress and Spider. Gloria had been crying, frustration and fear, and he gently chafed her wrists as their friends streamed into the room, plans already circling in his mind.

When the pulse in the Elsewhere came he drew a circle and dragged Grey into it. Laney peered out, bedecked in the Elsewhere fires, and grinned at them knowingly. Liam wanted to tell her to come back, to forget it, but he had given years of his life to this fight already. He couldn’t keep her from it any more than Jack and George could’ve convinced him to head out of the mountains after they found him in the Graves’ keep. He swallowed.  
“I can already guess where they’re going.” Grey went still beside him, while Rupert just glanced their way. “Lane, I already know - I’ve _been_ there.” She nodded, while Grey progressed to trembling. Liam dropped a comforting arm around the kid’s thin shoulders.

“Yeah. But I’m going to get more information this way, and I can get out whenever I want. Sorry, Liam, but I didn’t sign up for this so I could sit safe and sound in the family tent.”  
She closed the skin of the world up behind her, and Liam went to write a letter home.

For the entire journey into the mountains, Liam kept his badge pinned neatly to his chest. The closer to home they got the more he felt its weight tugging at him, but he was recognisable, here - he needed whatever help he could get to keep from being apprehended for being who he was, when he couldn’t travel quickly and quietly through empty paths. He rode alongside Rupert and watched Grey, waited with his anxious heartbeat in his ears for Laney’s evening visits, and tried to figure out whether he was still the Piper, or if he was just a League man now.

The Seeress had added new tricks to her repertoire since Liam had left. Laney slipped into camp to stay, and the mage slavers came trotting on her heels. Liam woke in the back of a covered cart, nauseous on the leftover drug and being dragged apart by the anti-mage wards pressing on him from all sides.

She came to see him first, in his cell, to dangle Jack in front of him like a bauble, to pour salt into every wound on him she could see -

_(- of course he was an idealistic child, now, wasn’t he - did you ever try to convince him to leave while he could, Piper? Or did you tell yourself it wasn’t worth the effort -)_

\- she smirked, and let dark delight colour her voice as she prattled on about his sister, in another cell, her fragile bones and all of the little ways you could break a sharpshooter -

( _\- a sensitive, shame she wasn’t a mage, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for her…really, very irresponsible of you, Piper, to lead her here. She must be about the Giantkiller’s age, now - does she know that the people who decide you’re worth saving tend to wind up dead? No, of course not - you didn’t even trust her enough to tell her who you were -_ )

\- and she smiled coldly as she pondered which them she should have drained first, him or his little friend -

( _\- on the one hand, I’ve been wanting to feed you into the machines for so long…but no, I think this would hurt you more, wouldn’t it? To sit here and know that I was having him burned up, that you wouldn’t even know when he was gone unless I deign to have you informed. I suppose I should thank you for bringing him to me so nicely, but I’m not particularly inclined to gratitude. Really, Piper, I thought you’d learnt not to bring anyone along to see me unless you wanted to see them dead -_ )

\- and then he was alone except for the Elsewhere crack around his throat, waiting for someone to rescue him.

If he had been placing bets, Liam would have thought it would be Laney and Rupert who made it to his cell first; Laney wouldn’t dare to port directly in, not when he couldn’t ward himself safe, and she’d pick Rupert up that way first to pick the lock. But it was Grey who dissolved the door in a spray of molten gold, Liam’s pack slung over a shoulder (it had one of Grey’s books in, and a handful of folded pages that were the most precious of the letters and pictures Liam had been sent over the past two years). Laney and Rupert skidded round the corner, questions bubbling on their lips, and Liam found the grating he’d been led to the first time he escaped the Seeress’ dungeons.

The drop spots were where he remembered, and he took his second family home. Grey was skittish, watching him warily, thrown by having to reconcile that Liam and the Piper really were one and the same. Rupert was tired, lost without all of his careful preparations and redundancies. Laney was angry, but Liam felt rather like he deserved it. He had meant to tell her - someday. He had meant to tell her all of the details he’d left out of his tales someday, but he hadn’t thought about how she would feel when she realised he’d been risking life and limb daily for years, and that they would never have known if he fell.

George rolled her eyes and made slightly stiff jokes about bounties and badges, until they both relaxed into being themselves again, clicking back into place. Rupert’s reaction to discovering that the Dragon Slayer was one of Liam’s closest friends was a bright spot eclipsed only by the sheer relief at them all making it out unscathed, and the joy at seeing his wife and daughter again. Bidi had grown, and it hit him in the chest harder than he could have imagined, realising that he’d missed so many things that no-one would think to tell him. Laney was stiff, formal, and Liam ached with the realisation that even if she’d written to them, his sister still wasn’t really sure she belonged here, where half their stories revolved around a boy whose name Liam had never been able to bring himself to tell her.

His skin itched with the feeling that he didn’t quite belong here either, now. Bidi was so much taller, and the wrinkles around Bea’s eyes were deeper than they had been, and he had scars he hadn’t even thought to write to his wife about because the scuffles had been so insignificant. George was centred and breathing, and he kept expecting her to fracture, watching for the hollow listlessness she’d ghosted around the bakery with when she thought no one was there in the days after. There was a new shelf in the kitchen and a burn mark on a table, and sometime in the years he’d been gone one of his favourite mugs had fallen from the cupboard to shatter.

Sometime in the years he had been gone, _Spider_ had become one of George’s informants.

(Sometime in the years he had been gone, Thorne had become one of Liam’s supporters, and wasn’t it strange how he didn’t trust the man a step but he still didn’t need to question it, that there was a chance and a plan and they could bring the Graves’ down - but then that had always been George’s role, cynic and ruthless pragmatist, while Liam always had to work at it to remember that not everyone was on his side.)

Nameless gunmen drew on them as they travelled, and Liam didn’t think. He didn’t need to think, George’s step at his back, another set of familiar boots at his other flank, the mountains peering down like old friends around him.  
“Sniper’s mine! Kiddo, on the left!” The world lit up gold at his fingertips as George struck low, and bullets rang off of the stone around them. He turned to ask _when did you get a gun, Farris?_ , and the words died on his lips at Laney’s level, unimpressed look. George clutched her spear, stricken and hiding it, and he hated that he could turn her that pale without thinking.

“I know I’m your younger sibling, Liam, but somehow I don’t think I’m who you were thinking of, there.” She tucked her guns into their holsters and squared her shoulders. Liam rubbed his eyes.  
“I spent five years with two people I trusted at my back, Lane. Walking these roads with the Dragon Slayer at my side? Can’t blame me for having a moment of deja vu.” He motioned at her to search the bodies, sharing old jokes with George,  tucking coins into his purse. Laney stared at him as though she knew him less than she had two years earlier.  
“You - this is so thoughtless to you, blood and - Liam, I’m not interested in being a replacement for your lost sidekick because you needed someone to look up to - the Seeress said people _die_ around you. He died around you -”  
_“And I left!”_

Liam had been last, as they fled up the narrow gorge away from the shattered stonework. He had heard the shot and had hit the ground, but he’d been looking in front of him as he dropped. George had spent days at a time tripping Liam to teach him to roll, and Jack had cheerfully thrown himself at the ground in encouragement, demonstration, and sympathy alongside, every time. He would bounce back up to his feet, grinning, and offer a winded Liam an open palm.

Jack fell as though tripped, but he didn’t curl around it and spring back, laughing, reddish dust coating his back. He fell and Liam watched him hit the ground, red hair and redder blood, a child shaken and still in his arms. Liam pushed himself up and reached out, gold spooling around his fingers, desperate. The fire had swirled and swirled but refused to sink into Jack, and George had hauled him roughly to his feet and shoved the child into his arms.

Sometime after the town had faded from view and they had slowed to a walk, but before they had reached the next safe spot, Liam realised the child was splattered with red tinted mud, and had to throw up off the side of the path. He took a deep breath, then wiped the kid’s face with his sleeve as thunder rolled overhead. She whimpered, quiet and numb but still scared, and he didn’t bother pretending it was only rainwater rolling down his face.

George hadn’t let herself shake and shutdown until they had made it home, Bidi confused and tucked up in bed, and Bea weeping onto Liam’s shoulder. Liam had seen the moment George realised she had nothing left to be strong for - their rescues were safely on their way, the door was closed, and now they weren’t the Piper and the Dragon Slayer, vigilantes who had a job to do. In the warmth of home they were just Liam and George, and the aching space that used to be Jack.

 _We fill the sky with our mourning,_ Liam murmured at the funeral, and George had remembered ash ground into the palms of her hands.

Even though he knew exactly how little she cared for the Leagues, something still twisted in Liam’s gut when George walked away from Thorne’s conference. He couldn’t envision doing this without her; she and Jack had _been_ the fight when he first met them, and George had never been one to walk away from unfinished things. He tracked her down to the walls, later, desperate and confused, and she was blinking back tears. He’d seen her cry so very rarely, in five years of work and blood and children weeping on their shoulders as they fled.

“I’m getting out, Liam. When this is done, I’m leaving my spear and going to the University. I can’t - I can’t do this anymore. You and Jack saved me, Liam, but that’s not fair to either of us. I couldn’t breathe when I met Jack, and I couldn’t breathe when you left, and I don’t - so I’m out. I’ll hold Challenge through this and you can take down the Graves’, and then I’m going.”  
She stared out, not looking at him, because she was on sentry duty and George had always done what she needed to, not what she wanted. He thought maybe he’d forgotten that about her - that Jack had jumped at the chance to help people (any people), and Liam had set out for an adventure and fallen into something bigger and darker than he could imagine, but George had only ever wanted to live.

Over the past year, Liam had figured out that Rupert was there because he felt he owed it to someone - everyone, maybe. That was a lie, though - _Laney_ had figured it out, and had snapped it at him when Liam was being flippant, because Liam had never had to work for their mother’s approval or to make himself stand tall without it. Liam poured power into wounded civilians and startled Doc with his newfound knowledge of herblore, and wondered what Rupert had wanted.

George didn’t care for the Leagues but she cared for her friends, and she waved him on to the upper levels as she and Laney tackled the basement machines. Liam felt every step as he walked away, remembering watching Laney duck behind a fire spirit and wondering if he’d get as lucky this time. He tried not to think about who would hold him up if he had to bury either of his sisters, and thought instead about how surreal it was to walk alongside Spider as though they were allies, Grey slipping along ahead of them.

The Seeress’ cold gaze was almost refreshing in it’s simplicity. He expected nothing but cold disdain and hatred from her, and he got it - until her eyes widened and a name Liam didn’t know fell from her frozen lips. They ran, and Liam realised that the Seeress knew as well as he what it was to hold the most precious part of herself outside of her skin.

The mayor’s new weapon hit him with a tearing sensation in his gut, like an Elsewhere crack and an open rift combined. Liam crumpled to the floor, gasping, held awkwardly half aloft thanks to Spider’s handcuffs. He eyed the Seeress’ stiff shoulders and realised she hadn’t planned on that - she’d been planning on him escaping in the nick of time, a distraction or a disruption.

Grey was still shaken, his father staring at him with a mix of shock and love that made Liam feel sick. Or maybe that was just the realisation that Grey, the pipsqueak sage with the waving hands and the hidden power, wasn’t just a kid who’d gotten lucky and gotten away. Maybe it was the realisation that Grey’s beloved sister was Liam’s worst nightmare, that one’s saviour was the other’s villain. Maybe it was both, but it didn’t matter, because when Grey squared his thin, trembling shoulders and told his father he had to stop, Liam still shouted at him to stop, to flee, because it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter who Grey had been so long as he went _on_ being.

Laney’s knotted magic blazed from the doorway as both Grey and Liam shrieked warnings, and she fell with a pained cry, pushing herself up to her knees as the Mayor turned a patch of floor next to Liam’s leg to charcoal. Grey pleaded and gasped, while Liam twisted out of the way and shook with pain that had left no marks. She pointed a gun that shook wildly into the glow that had fed off of all the power at their combined fingertips, and the Mayor chuckled, smug and certain.  
“You’re the Piper’s kin, aren’t you? Yes, Cassandra told me all about the sensitive, the soft-hearted Piper’s little right-hand gun. You won’t use that.” His sister’s jaw tensed, her eyes as cold as their mother’s when someone tried to cheat her.

“I’m not my brother,” said Laney, and fired into the cloud of gold until she had no bullets left.

When he had first left the deserts, Liam had found his way to St John’s Port. It had been the most water he’d ever seen in one place, and he had yelped at it’s chill around his bare feet. He’d looked up at the mountains and thought I’m going to go everywhere. He hadn’t planned to go back to the Port, but he’d traded solemn glances with Laney and held Bea’s hands as she explained that he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t go and fetch Rupert home.

Thorne had dropped some paperwork on his desk a few weeks in, when Liam had backed Laney up to tear down yet another slaver outpost, with a benign smile and gleaming glasses. Liam ran his fingers over the (unofficial) official pardon for the Pied Piper, all the signatures and seals that meant if his secret slipped out he could walk free. Laney convinced him to sweet talk extra copies from Thorne, and ported up to the mountains to leave one set with Bea, another at Challenge, a third hidden someplace only she knew (just in case). She didn’t tell Liam, but the fourth copy she tucked carefully into George’s pocket, because Laney had been far quicker than her brother to understand the difference between _I can’t go back to who we were_ and _I want to forget._

Liam and Laney were in and out of the mountains often enough to watch the seasons shift, and he grew used to the hiss and sting of the people who felt abandoned. Laney didn’t, because she’d watched him walk away once and felt rather as though no-one else had the right to hate him for it if she didn’t. Liam sat through it the way he hadn’t through combat specs’ ugly muttering at his age, his major, or through the Merry Men’s less than merry taunts and bile when he slipped back beneath their trees with a badge on his chest and his sister in tow. Laney pushed herself to her feet, sparks at her fingertips and fury on her tongue, but Bea didn’t even have to raise her voice. She slipped into the chair by Liam’s and rested her head on his shoulder, and ignored everyone who chose to comment on how long her husband had been away.

As much as Liam hated it, Thorne knew about his wife and child; the marriage records, and the Spider’s whispers through the years. But it meant that when they went to hunt down slavers, Laney was able to twist and tweak their plans to include visits to her sister-in-law, or at least stopovers long enough for the Baker to drop by to nag them both to get more sleep. Bidi scurried in her wake, playing with the ends of Laney’s hair and badgering her father for stories while her aunt smirked over her curly head.

Nowadays, the ghosts at Liam’s heels in the mountains were more than just a redhead with a knack for jumping into things big enough to swallow him whole. He expected wry sarcasm in his ear, but he was listening out for Grey’s snark as well. Jack was muttering herb-lore in the back of his head as he worked, but he looked up and was surprised when he didn’t see Rupert offering the injured civilian a drink of water and a clean shirt.

They were all seeing Rupert out of the corner of their eye, in their own ways. Laney wrote equipment lists and packed spare cereal bars. Grey hefted himself to his feet in the apartment he shared with Liam, in the shaking grip of a minor Elsewhere storm, and tried to feed himself. Liam looked at his hands and thought _what more would Rupert do, here?_

But they couldn’t find him - or, they found him and then forgot, heavy heads on emptied desks, doors they couldn’t remember opening, the margins of a building paced and measured, and suspicion gradually condensing into certainty. Liam had been almost certain for months, because the Seeress had smirked at him and he knew (he had always known) - if she had something that could hurt him, she would use it, and she’d been the villain for so long that he couldn’t imagine she was telling the truth when she said her father didn’t trust her.

Liam thought that was all he was missing, when he woke bleary and felt that there was a space in the back of his head that should be full. He ached, and thought that he was just feeling the weight of Rupert’s absence and the way they couldn’t seem to find their lost friend anywhere. Bea wrote that it was a cold winter, and he held her hand in their kitchen while Bidi taught Laney how to throw snowballs outside, and she talked into the shaking air about her sister and the way it was hitting her harder than usual, that year.

He rubbed circles on her back and talked about Jack, about how he was feeling that loss more keenly this month, too, how it came and went, and she pressed her face into his shoulder. They told stories to a wide eyed Bidi that night, about her father’s friends - the Giantkiller, the Merry Men, Rosie Red and Snow White. There was a half-eaten pack of saltwater taffy on his daughter’s shelf, and none of them could remember whether it had been Liam or Laney who sent it.

(The _important_ thing, Bidi informed them solemnly, was that they had to send her _more_ )

When he and Laney were caught spying on a below the radar local hub in their downtime, they still woke bound, but it was a precaution rather than a threat. Marian Hood peered at Liam with slight suspicion tinged with bemusement. She didn’t have to wait for him to recognise her to know who he was. The Piper had stood out like a sore thumb in the mountains, and he’d spent a summer in her woods. He had a few new scars and deeper bags under his eyes, but he hadn’t changed much in any way she could see other than the badge in his pocket.

Mari had hated the Giantkiller for years, with the hot, easy fury of a broken heart needing someone to blame. She had never liked Jack, much; he was too smiley for her tastes, too eager to throw himself into anything and never think about the consequences, too ready to leave his forest and his family behind on a whim. It had been the Giantkiller who stood, eyes wide and heart on his sleeve, asking Robin for his help.

Jack had asked, but Robin had gone. On good days, Mari remembered that - that one of the many things she had loved about Robin was his soft heart, that no matter how she loved him he had never been hers to cage. On good days, she remembered that Jack had just been a boy who believed in helping, that he had wept as Robin burned, and that he had also died too young.

On bad days she whispered ‘good riddance’, and believed she meant it.

Liam hadn’t asked for Robin’s help, but he had clapped him on the shoulder and grinned when he showed up. Mari didn’t blame him, because this was what she remembered: Liam curled beneath their sheltering trees in the grips of an Elsewhere storm, the softness of his eyes when he talked of Bea, the way his voice had cracked when he said goodbye in that still clearing. She had never known him when he was footloose and she had never thought about the way he had set out to find adventure far from home, once upon a time, and never written back. In the parlance of the Forest, she had thought he was one of the ones that built.

Now she stared at him, not sure if she was surprised more by the badge in his pocket or at seeing him away from the mountains, when she knew that the Baker was still holding court in her valleys and vales. She hissed at him about fleeing, abandoning Bea and Bidi, about dragging more children into the Giantkiller’s crusade to fill his hollow space. Ana Jones had been watching Laney’s fingers twist and was still surprised when she shot to her feet ahead of schedule, golden fire lighting up the room. A pipsqueak kid peered around at them all, and Ana wondered why she was watching him as though he was almost as much of a threat as the Jones siblings.

Liam was trembling, old wounds ripped raw, and Marian was pressing her lips thin. Curled awkwardly against the wall, shoulder stinging, Ana rather thought the woman was wishing that just once she’d kept her thoughts locked behind her teeth. Liam breathed out, aching, and shook his head.

“Jack was only ever trying to help people, Mari. He never asked people to do anything he wouldn’t do in a heartbeat, and neither am I. I left because I needed time and space and to learn how not to get people killed, and I left because I was shaking myself to pieces - and you don’t get to curse me for that, Marian, because you did the same.” He squared his shoulders and grinned. Even if they didn’t know it, everyone in the room but Grey had known him when his smile was so much brighter. “And Mari? Believe me, no-one drags my baby sister anywhere she doesn’t want to go.”

They’d never know what Marian would have said, because that was when Much burst in to tell them there were bigger problems at hand. In the frantic work at the sick houses, Grey and Liam both worn from feeding all the power they could call up in the time they had into Laney’s stores, Liam found himself handing out soothing teas and clean cloths alongside one of the lab techs he saw occasionally in the halls at work. Jill Chu murmured greetings, and soon after hunted him down to pass on a message from a missing friend.

They broke into the Bureau to find that Rupert had broken himself out. Ana listened to Miz Eliza Hammersfeld’s delighted observations and listened to herself taking notes in the back of her empty mind. Liam stumbled to a halt when he saw the Seeress, and Laney put herself between Grey and his sister.

Laney hadn’t told Liam that she’d been sent to fetch the Seeress, because he had been so tired and she wanted to give him space, the way they were letting Grey rest. He’d been fighting this so much longer than her, so she had decided to tidy up the last few loose ends on his behalf. Liam hadn’t told her about Sam Graves, because that was Grey’s secret to keep and Liam couldn’t exactly point fingers about hiding your past from your friends. The Seeress read it all in their faces, and smiled coldly. Grey squirmed, and Laney grabbed him by the shoulder to steer him safely out of the Bureau because she’d figured out who her family was long before, and the finer historical details didn’t particularly matter.

The curse struck him, and Liam fell through the window into his friends’ waiting arms. He drifted in and out of his surroundings all the way to Rivertown, Grey’s hand on his leg and Laney peering down at him, pale and furious. Sez slammed his sister into a wall, wept on Rupert’s resurrected shoulder, and for the second time in his life Liam hit the wooden floor of Sally-Anne’s thanks to one of the Seeress’ curses.

When Clem saw them in the Rivertown street, he cut his excited chatter with Gloria short, eyes dancing over them - Liam and Laney’s towering heights, the lack of a squeaky sage in their shadows, and his heart twisted. Grey had sent him regular letters of number theory, puzzles, and long rambling tangents every week from his desk in St John’s Port, but he’d missed that week. For a moment, Clem could think of only one reason that Laney and Liam would be standing in that street, bruised and bleeding, empty space where Liam’s leg should have been, without their sage in tow.

Leaf stumbled through an apology for Rupert, and the pair of them grinned sharp and cold. Red was well considered, Gloria was one of the smart ones - but Clem didn’t waste his time letting them tell him what they thought he was, just barged forwards and demanded to know if Grey was safe and well, too, before he’d even think about the rest of what they’d said.

When Sandry saw Clem, she flicked an eyebrow at her brother and smirked, a glance that said _so you found yourself a bodyguard, smart boy_ , and it shattered on the unhidden warmth in his smile. Grey had found Clem difficult to work with as a League, his lack of fluency in snark and the way he’d always been able to rely on his strength, but they’d formed a strange, strong friendship in sleepless nights and debating mathematical theory. Clem had dragged Grey home with him for their second winter holiday at the Academy, to meet his beloved grandmother and do sums at her kitchen table instead of hiding out in the library on his own. The Seeress turned her eyes to her old hatreds instead. It was cleaner, somehow, the blood on their hands and the way every part of Liam itched to threaten, than watching all the parts of her brother’s life she no longer knew.

Throne tried to claim Rivertown, and Sez spat in his face. Liam ran shaking hands over his stump, and Laney ported herself and Rupert up to the mountains to leave their hero to babysit Bidi while Bea came through to hold her husband’s hand and scold him so fiercely for always getting himself into scrapes without her that Rue took an instant liking to her. Liam pressed his forehead to hers, and told her he’d leave if she asked him to, and she drew herself up, tall and cold, and he buried his face in her shoulder to hide his smile. She leaned on the back of his chair and dropped constructive criticisms and advice on their plans until it was time to go home and put Bidi to bed.

Liam sat on the end of a comm spell his sister had set up, and listened to the murmur of voices from over the city as he waited for one to spark up as it registered his name. He frowned in puzzled recognition at slightly squeaky voice coming from Clem’s end of things, marshaling kids in the Academy into organised groups to be safely sheltered, until he heard the name _Farris_ drop from some unseen combat spec’s lips. He stared at the rippling golden wall, and recalled rows of faces crumpling as they were told their beanstalk wasn’t coming home. He remembered a spitfire kid who’d reminded him of Laney, some, but mostly was exactly how he’d have imagined a younger Jack. He wondered if the dry whisper in her pauses was the cousin who’d accepted a gift of new books with wide eyes and open palms.

He didn’t remember who had done the giving, or the speaking, until the blow came. The watchtower was wood and he hit it hard enough to bruise, breath pouring out of him in a gasp. He stumbled down the steps to bury scarred fingers in George’s short cropped hair, gasping, unhurt except for the way his elbow was stinging from catching on the table as he keeled over. George was gripping the back of his shirt like a lifeline, and this hadn’t hurt. It had not been violent, no blood or broken bone, but then standing in the wreckage of her village hadn’t been violent either, and she’d carried that with her ever since.

When the phone went in Sally-Anne’s and Thorne dripped threats and blackmail, Laney shoved it into Liam’s hands and told him to stall for them. He sat on the other end of the line, the Seeress’ eyes cold on him, Grey’s wide and begged for the lives of his wife and child. Bidi was screaming, and Bea was snapping, and Liam was clutching the edge of the table so hard it hurt, because he was weeks away and all he could do was wait.

There was a dull roar, new screams, and the line cut out. He was still standing, staring, when Laney reappeared streaked with ash to tell him that the dragons had come when Bidi called. He would have given all the power in the world to be able to vanish through the rift with her without being devoured, but instead he begged Rue for work, because if he had idle hands he would do nothing but think of what he would have done if Laney had told him they had been too late.

Grey cried onto his shoulder, curled in the dark of the warehouse one night, because he’d so rarely been safe and his sister had never been. Liam stared into the dusty corners and swallowed down every part of him that wanted to say _good, do you know what she’s done? She doesn’t deserve to be safe_ , because Grey was more important than his own hate. He tried to think what Rupert would do, then thought about Jack and how he thought that everyone was worth saving. So he pressed his chin to the top of Grey’s head, and let the kid cry himself out because the world wasn’t fair.

He thought about what Jack would do, when the Seeress had his own gun pointed at him, cheeks gilded in gold. Once, Liam had known a boy who thought everyone was worth saving. Jack had known the Seeress before she had perfected her masks, and Liam thought maybe Jack would have said that she deserved a chance to save herself. Liam hadn’t. The most honest thing the Seeress had said to him, in their five years of conflict, had been that her father didn’t trust her more than her use, and he hadn’t believed her. She hadn’t told him that she loved her brother more than herself, but he had seen it in the way her eyes widened and her breath caught. He thought about what he would have given, to protect Bidi just days before, and shook his head when she tried to hand the weapon back to him with a hand that trembled.  
“Keep it. It’s a dangerous world out there.”

They won, and they lost, and lost, and lost - Liam didn’t recognise even half of the names of the dead, but he saw them all go into the ground. He wrapped an arm around Laney’s shoulders and gripped George’s hand tight, the way Red was leaning heavily on Leaf’s shoulder and Heather was clutching Gloria, all of them holding each other up. He closed his eyes as Clem sunk into the ground, Grey trembling as he leaned into Rupert’s side, and tried to remember how to breathe. He was so very tired of burying children.

“We fill the sky with our mourning,” Laney murmured as they stumbled home under clear blue skies, and Grey asked with the desperation of a scholar seeking distraction what she meant.

Tessa Farris burst into their lives in the aftermath, her sage cousin shadowing her heels, and it burned - Liam had seen a Farris with a heart that big crash through doors before, a quiet, smart kid on his heels to watch for all of the dangers Jack wasn’t looking out for. Gloria taught Tessa a new trick while Red carefully ducked all of Laney’s pointed, laughing comments about _oh, isn’t Tessa a girls name, mister Uyeda?_ and Liam and George traded entertained glances as they imagined how May was going to like this story, next time they all met to raise a glass to fallen friends.

Hansel cornered them the next evening, Tessa lurking behind him, to ask them for more stories about Jack. Liam had to press his hand over his eyes for a moment before he could speak, voice rough until he settled into his best storyteller’s spin. He had stayed one night at the Farris’ Rambly House, and that had been enough to tell them how Jack had fallen, how he had saved people - but he had five years of their kin locked in his heart, and Hansel was scribbling it all down in splatters of ink to send home. George wasn’t much of a storyteller, but she rested her head on the wall behind her, and threw reminders at him until his throat was hoarse.

Liam woke, weeks later, to a delighted shriek and sudden weight on his chest. He peered into his daughter’s wide eyes, and hefted her up to sit on his hip. Laney smirked at him over Bea’s shoulder as he walked to the doorway.  
“I thought it was about time I met my mother-in-law.” Bea smiled, eyes crinkling, and reached for him as Bidi squirmed to avoid getting crushed. Laney took her niece’s hand when Liam put her her down so that he could wrap his arms around his wife and feel her heartbeat against his, steady and sure.


End file.
